'Truth spoken without moderation reverses itself'
This blog is a source for intellectual exploration. It includes a list of alternative resources and a source of free books. The placement of an article does not imply that I agree with it, merely that I found it thought-provoking. There are also poems and book reviews. Texts written by me are labelled. Readers are free to re-post anything they like.

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Ajoy Bose: The fall of Mayawati: Brahmins leave the BSP building / Arati Jerath: Modi has mastered disruptive innovation to sweep the carpet from under opponents / Ajaz Ashraf: Should Muslims keep away from electoral politics?

The devastating rout
of the BSP finally brings the curtain down on the amazing saga of Behenji. Her
meteoric rise since the early 1990s has been followed by successive setbacks
each worse than the other over the past eight years. Even Mayawati cannot
survive this series of relentless body blows.

Her hysteria was
evident when she declared that the EVMs had been rigged and that an unknown
mysterious journalist ‘wearing a cap and a beard’ had warned her so at a
previous press conference. Mayawati now faces the mortification of losing her
own Rajya Sabha seat after her term expires next year. The meagre number of BSP
legislators is not enough to send her back to Parliament. It can be argued that
the BSP was helpless like other political parties against the Modi tsunami in
UP in 2014 and once again now. But there is reason to believe there is one
elemental dynamic influencing the rise, decline and fall of Mayawati: the
support and loss of it from Brahmins.

It is a telling
paradox that the first big success of a Dalit party in mainstream Indian
politics was propelled by Brahmins in UP who decided to prop up a political
outfit with an overtly anti-Brahminical ideology. They were determined to curb
the rising clout of Mulayam Singh Yadav who had, with the help of the BSP,
defeated the BJP in 1993 in the aftermath of the Babri Masjid demolition. In the summer of 1995,
Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Murli Manohar Joshi, both Brahmins, engineered a coup
that led to the installation of Mayawati as CM of a minority BSP government in
UP supported by both the BJP and the Congress. The then Congress Prime Minister
PV Narasimha Rao, also a Brahmin, publicly celebrated it as “a miracle of
democracy”… read more:

If the Lok Sabha
election three years ago heralded the emergence of a phenomenon called Narendra
Modi, the 2017 state polls have pole vaulted him into an unassailable position
as the country’s predominant political leader. Like it or not he is,
and will remain till 2019 and probably beyond, the pivot around which national
and state politics revolve, much like Indira Gandhi in her time.

It is no mean feat
that more than halfway into his term Modi successfully recreated the 2014 wave
to storm UP as comprehensively as he did three years ago. The ripples reached
two other states, neighbouring Uttarakhand which gave BJP a decisive majority,
and faraway Manipur which has seen a saffron surge for the first time. With
this Modi has washed away the opprobrium of the twin defeats he suffered in
2015 when he was bested by rookie Aam Aadmi Party in the Delhi state poll and
the grand alliance of Nitish Kumar, Lalu Prasad and Rahul Gandhi in the Bihar
assembly election.

It would be gross
underestimation of Modi’s political skills to attribute the UP sweep simply to
communal polarisation through his invocation of the kabristan versus shamshan
ghat paradigm. Modi has never hesitated to flaunt his Hindu hriday samrat
credentials. But as he proved first in Gujarat and now on the national stage,
he has also mastered the art of disruptive innovation as a political tool to
capture the imagination of a rapidly changing polity. Disruptive innovation is
a phenomenon analysed by American scholar Clayton Christensen to explain the
creation of new markets and value networks by disrupting existing ones.

While his opponents
and analysts of the liberal variety remain trapped in old political models that
have little currency with today’s voters, Modi revels in disturbing the status
quo to enlarge his support base and attract new supporters. He is the
“outsider” in the charmed Lutyens’ Delhi circle, the chaiwala who dares to
challenge the privileged set born with a silver spoon in its mouth.

Demonetisation was his
most daring gambit yet, dropped on an unsuspecting public as a surgical strike
against black money and corruption. It was widely criticised by renowned
economists here and abroad as bad policy. But Modi made it work for him
politically, using his wizardry with words to cast himself as a Robin Hood-like
figure who took from the “wicked” rich to help the poor. Voters in UP clearly
bought this narrative even as they complained about the disruption in their
lives because for those stuck near the bottom of the ladder, any change is
better than status quo… read more:

Four months before the
Uttar Pradesh election results sent Muslims in India reeling in shock, former
Rajya Sabha MP Mohammed Adeeb delivered a speech in Lucknow, which, in
hindsight, might be called prescient. “If Muslims don’t wish
to have the status of slaves, if they don’t want India to become a Hindu
rashtra, they will have to keep away from electoral politics for a while and,
instead, concentrate on education,” Adeeb told an audience comprising mostly
members of the Aligarh Muslim University’s Old Boys Association.

It isn’t that Adeeb
wanted Muslims to keep away from voting. His aim was to have Muslim
intellectuals rethink the idea of contesting elections, of disabusing them of
the notion that it is they who decide which party comes to power in Uttar
Pradesh. Adeeb’s suggestion,
that is contrary to popular wisdom, had his audience gasping. This prompted him
to explain his suggestion in greater detail. “We Muslims chose in
1947 not to live in the Muslim rashtra of Pakistan,” he said. “It is now the
turn of Hindus to decide whether they want India to become a Hindu rashtra or
remain secular. Muslims should understand that their very presence in the
electoral fray leads to a communal polarisation. Why?”

Not one to mince
words, Adeeb answered his question himself. “A segment of Hindus
hates the very sight of Muslims,” he said. “Their icon is Narendra Modi. But
75% of Hindus are secular. Let them fight out over the kind of India they want.
Muslim candidates have become a red rag to even secular Hindus who rally behind
the Bharatiya Janata Party, turning every election into a Hindu-Muslim one.” Later in the day,
Adeeb met Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, who was in Lucknow. To Adeeb, Azad
asked, “Why did you deliver such a speech?” It was now Azad’s turn
to get a mouthful from Adeeb. He recalled asking Azad: “What kind of secularism
is that which relies on 20% of Muslim votes? The Bahujan Samaj Party gets a
percentage of it, as do the Samajwadi Party and the Congress.” At this, Azad invited
Adeeb, who was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh, to join the
Congress. Adeeb rebuffed the offer saying, “First get the secular Hindus
together before asking me to join.”

Spectre of a Hindu
rashtra: A day after the Uttar Pradesh
election results sent a shockwave through the Muslim community, Adeeb was
brimming with anger. He said, “Syed Ahmed Bukhari [the so-called Shahi Imam of
Delhi’s Jama Masjid] came to me with a question: ‘Why aren’t political parties
courting me for Muslim votes?’ I advised him to remain quiet, to not interfere
in politics.” Nevertheless, Bukhari went on to announce that Muslims should
vote the Bahujan Samaj Party...